Pancreatitis - Symptoms

The symptoms of pancreatitis can vary greatly from patient to patient. What were your symptoms at the onset of your disease?

Share your story with others:

eMedicineHealth appreciates your comment. Your comment may be displayed on the site and will always be published anonymously.

Tell us a bit about your background to make your comments more useful to other eMedicineHealth
users. (Optional)

Screen Name:
*

Gender of Patient:
Male
Female

Age Range of Patient:

I am a:
Patient
Caregiver

Enter your comment (required)

* Screen Name will appear next to the
published comment. Please do not include your full name or email address.

By submitting your comment, and other materials (collectively referred to as a "Submission")
to eMedicineHealth, you grant eMedicineHealth permission to use, copy, transmit,
publish, display, edit and modify your Submission in connection with its Web site.
eMedicineHealth will not pay you for your Submission. You represent that you have
all rights necessary for eMedicineHealth to use your Submission as set forth above.

Please keep these guidelines in mind when writing your comment:

Please make sure you address the question asked.

Due to the overwhelming number of comments received, not all comments will be published.

When selecting comments to publish, our staff will choose those that are educational
and complement the topic. Please try to stay on topic.

Your comment may be edited. We would typically edit comments to make them clearer
and more readable. We will remove personal information such as last names, email
and web addresses, and other potentially harmful information.

We will not notify you if your comment has been published. We suggest that you check
back on the topic article regularly.

We do not provide medical or healthcare advice, treatment, or diagnosis.

To prevent our systems from spam, please complete the following
prior to submitting your comment.

Please select the white triangle:

See what others are saying

Published: July 28

It has been a long road, about 25 years of symptoms. Started out as pain and tenderness below sternum area. Said I had chronic gastritis. Had severe constipation. Could only eat small meals and felt full for a very long time. Had severe bloating. Symptoms progressively got worse over the years. Began having horrible nausea, epigrastic and right flank pain after eating. A Hida scan showed gallbladder functioning at only 8% and said probable sphincter of oddie dysfunction. Had gall bladder out Jan 2010.The doc told me this would cure me. One month later still had same symptoms, only more severe. I kept telling my doc, I thought it was my pancreas. My blood sugar might run 60 one hour after eating or it might be 160 three hours after eating. I kept complaining to my doctors. They did CTs, MRIs, MRCP, US, blood work didn't show any increases in pancreatic enzymes and all scans showed up clear. I finally got my doc to refer me to a specialist about having an ERCP done in Louisville. He did an endoscopic US of the pancreas and it showed pancreas divism (birth defect with pancreas having two ducts instead of one ). It also showed five out of nine criteria for chronic pancreatitis. He tried a large dose of Pancreas enzymes which I could not tolerate. He was not in any hurry to do an ERCP because of my deformed pancreas. When I could no longer tolerate the nausea and pain, I went back. I had the ERCP on July 21, 2011.He put a stent in the pancreas and the common bile duct. I was in the hospital for 2 1/2 days and had 5 days of horrible spasm type abdominal pain He said my pancreas is very inflamed. They called today and want to do another ERCP in 3 weeks, not understanding this since they told me the stents would be taken out in two months. One thing to note: when I would eat, it would set off a series of symptoms like my heart pounding and beating fast, chest pressure, abdominal and flank pain and severe headache. These were caused by the pancreatitis stimulating the vagal nerve. The docs really need to listen to what the patient says and not rely so heavily on labs and first line tests. I was misdiagnosed and undiagnosed for so long that my pancreas is probably permanently damaged and will never recover well. Be your own health advocate. Never give up if you feel something is being missed with your health..

Published: December 24

I woke up feeling as if I inhaled 20 gallons of air. I was so bloated. I had pain across my stomach and under my rib cage. I went to the hospital about 5 hours later. By the time I got there the pain had increased so much I could hardly walk, my pancreatic enzymes were 450 and by the following night 5000. After 8 days I came home and because I was a drinker craved candy as I did not know the booze I drank every day was full of sugar and my body craved it..